Control your claims workflow

Become well versed in claims

Whether you’re a new or experienced partner, you’ll want to be sure you know how to manage your claims effectively. As a reminder, a claim links a video to an asset, enabling the rightsholder to apply their desired policy. In other words, claims allow partners to manage their content in different videos across YouTube.

Potential – Possible claims, short matches, low confidence claims, and claims routed for review because of a partner-provided policy

Disputed – Claims disputed by users who uploaded the claimed content

Appealed – Claims appealed by users after a dispute and reinstatement

Takedown – Claims for videos removed pursuant to a copyright takedown

Inactive – Claims that have become inactive (e.g., if a user deletes a claimed video, or a disputed claim isn’t reviewed within 30 days)

You can filter claims by their status, so you can quickly find claims that require your attention. You can also search for claims by keyword or other criteria, such as claim date range, video length, or lifetime views.

It’s important to monitor claims regularly, since not taking action could result in lost claims or revenue. A prevalence of disputed or appealed claims may indicate issues with your assertion of ownership or reference material. Be aware that abusive or fraudulent claims may result in penalties including legal liability and termination of partnership.

Tips

Identify where claims originate

Claims may come from two sources:

Partner Uploaded is content uploaded to a YouTube channel that you own

User Uploaded (also known as User Generated Content or UGC for short) is content uploaded by users to YouTube channels that you don’t own

As a partner, you can claim Partner Uploaded content when you upload videos at YouTube.com. During the upload process, you can specify the asset type, add metadata, and set a usage policy. If you enable Content ID matches for that video, this will also create a reference file and allow you to set a match policy at this time.

For User Uploaded content, Content ID automatically claims videos that match a partner’s reference material. YouTube applies the partner match policy and notifies the user who uploaded the video. When reviewing claims in Content ID, you can play back the matching content—for example, to check if the video qualifies as fair use based on the context.

Tips

Manage your claims workflow

While Content ID automates much of the process, you should monitor your account to ensure only valid claims are active. Some claims require action from a partner before the policy can be applied. For example, these claims could be pending due to low confidence matches or disputes.

Potential claims

When YouTube’s match system detects a low confidence match, it’s added to your Potential claims queue. This queue contains possible claims, short matches, and claims routed for review because of a partner-provided policy.

By routing potential claims for review to ensure accuracy, we aim to reduce disputes. If inaccurate claims are being made, you may need to edit the reference file or match policy on the asset, to prevent similar claims from appearing in your queue.

It’s important to review your potential claims regularly to determine which should be active or inactive. Potential claims will expire after 30 days if no action is taken. For more information on resolving potential claims, read here.

Disputed and appealed claims

You can also devote resources to address disputes. We allow for disputes of claimed videos when uploaders believe the claim is invalid or was made in error. For example, they may have explicit permission from the rightsholders or they may believe they’re operating under fair use guidelines.

Claimant’s policy is removed; releases all prior claims contained within this segment; segment isn’t used for making future claims

Takedown

Claimant issues a legal takedown notice

Reinstate claim

Accept claim (no action)

Claimant’s policy is applied

Appeal claim

Release claim

(same as before)

Reject appeal

Takedown

On the claim detail page, you can see the reason for the dispute or appeal, along with any additional text the uploader provided. Look carefully at this explanation. You can evaluate the content, by playing the reference file and video side-by-side to help determine the proper action based on the copyright ownership, your exclusive rights, and the uploader’s use.

When a claim is disputed, it goes from “active” to “pending,” meaning that the policy associated with the claim is suspended until the partner reviews the dispute. When both the uploader and claimant intend to monetize, YouTube holds the revenue separately until the dispute is settled and then pays the appropriate party. (For disputes filed within the first 5 days of the claim, we hold revenue generated from that video from the first day the Content ID claim was created. Read more.)

All disputed and appealed claims expire in 30 days if the claimant doesn’t take action, and the claim becomes inactive. You should address disputes promptly to confirm which claims are valid, to help you get paid for and control content you own.

If you issue a copyright takedown, that’s a legal notification of copyright infringement. Keep in mind the uploader may file a counter notification if they disagree with the alleged infringement.

Block outside ownership of your videos

If you own rights to your partner uploaded video in certain territories, you may want to prevent people elsewhere from watching your video. For example, if you uploaded a video and own it in the U.S. and Canada, you may want to block the video in territories where you don’t have ownership.

This “block outside ownership” is done at the claims level and only applies to the claimed partner-uploaded video. Using this will block your video in all territories where you haven’t set your ownership on the asset. YouTube only looks at the ownership from the video provider to determine this.

This is different from managing ownership of an asset, since assets can have multiple owners across different territories. You can only set “block outside ownership” for partner-uploaded videos, and you would need to set this flag for each video you wish to block.

With this feature, you can ensure your partner-uploaded video isn’t viewable in territories where you don’t have ownership. This doesn’t impact the asset or any other claims on that asset.

Tips

Exempt specific channels from claims

What if you’ve identified a particular channel that has permission to use your content, and you don’t want Content ID to automatically claim videos on that channel? For example, a movie studio might not want to claim videos on an authorized YouTube channel that reviews and promotes its films.

You would accomplish this by whitelisting the designated channel, thereby instructing Content ID not to claim any videos uploaded to this channel. The channel doesn’t have to be linked to, or have an exclusive relationship with, you or other copyright owners.

Whitelisting would be a good technique when you’ve licensed your content to other channels, or approved how those channels use your content. Since you won’t be claiming their videos, the channels themselves could decide whether to run ads on eligible content.